We are nowhere and it's now

My local shop may have changed owners again. To my eternal disappointment the brief experiment with outdoor dining, complete with baby powder tin to put the cigarettes out, has passed and the tables are back inside. Interestingly, there seems to be a lot more hardcore porn on sale just as you go in the door, without even the tasteful concession of contact style wrapping over the housewives, and I don't go into my local shop nearly often enough to be able to differentiate one Greek family from the other, but it has always seemed to me to be like a holiday home for one extended Greek Family where you can stay and cook mildly poisonous dim sims and see a bit of Big W, but clearly this particular family doesn't know how to run a business as the back door of the shop is wide open, a back door which backs onto the car park outside and no staff are inside the store, which makes the possibility of, well not a prison break, but certainly you could leg it back to your car before your Magnum melted. As I wander around listening to Chanel Cole on my IPOD and gathering up the single mans feast of crinkle cut chips and Red Eye, I do take a cheeky glance outside and there's no one in the car park and legging it without paying is certainly going to make for a great blogging adventure, but I am not built for thievery, and eventually a decent upbringing ensures I pay on EFTPOS like someone whos just discovered the 90s. The boy behind the counter never takes his eye off the Pascalls which are alligned neatly on a little rack across from where he is slumped. I begin to tell him the back door is open, but he continues to stare, patently uncaring as to what leaves the store and when. In fact, his entire disposition is Sunday in human form - lazy, sleepy, clock watching, slumped and desirous of a Clinker before he falls asleep. Being concerned even about something as basic as store security seems like a completely wasted emotion, a complete waste of energy in this environment, as behind me a man in a red cardigan and his bewilderingly manly girlfriend stare with lazy eyes at the specials board, hoping it would change into some sort of French cuisine experience. Were it not Sunday, were it not already clear that my presence was just getting in the way, I would point out that there used to be an outdoor dining experience and maybe they could ask the boy behind the counter to go and fetch the tin of baby powder, but his eyes are flickering with apathy, and asking him for a service seems beyond the remit of his powers. So there we all stand, trapped in mutual Sunday mode, and I'm at the whim of the boy behind a mask of low key hostility and a couple balefully staring at a specials board as if practicing some sort of trick where they can turn things to ash simply through desire. Time has no meaning in a shop like this, things have no value, and Red Eye, as delicious as a drink as it can be, doesn't feel especially worth it...

The wind in the car park is stirring, and the car park is already strangely assembled because there are traffic cones that don't seem to be isolating any roadworks or car park maintenance but which seem to be surrounding a sign for a Drumstick. I ponder the merits of a business which has gone to so much trouble to protect an ice cream sign but which doesn't seem to care if you lope out the store with arms full of groceries. At a certain point between getting into my car and emerging blinking into the grey, the wind hits my shoulder blade at a deceptively fast and aggressive pace, chilling me more than a film with a creepy clown. With no one else around, and such a bleak cold setting, not to mention the traffic cones dancing to their own tune as they begin to skid gently along the cracked concrete, it feels like the end of the world for a moment, like some terrible affliction has struck Kingston and only me and one casually staffed shop has survived. As I get into my car, a man emerges into the cold from round the corner, briefly making me huff that once again someone is in my way, holding me up - although deep down I'm fully aware he's not holding me up from anything in particular and that feels a little depressing. As he walks past my exhaust pipe, in an extravagant diamond covered hand knitted jumper and swaggering overconfidence that could be shattered with a single comment, I notice the wind is whipping through his wig, almost sending it flying into the drumstick sign. He clings to it desperately, and I do wonder whether or not there is anyone in Kingston he could legitimately be impressing, especially with his vanity almost fluttering down the road for him to chase. Eventually he more or less adjusts it on his head, shooting me a glance which could either be defiance or an attempt to see if it's on straight in my mirror, and then disappears as I drive off, listening to a tut tutting newsreader trying to tip toe his way around the Chris Brown story with 20ty uses of the word allegedly. He spits the word allegedly with a strange unprofessional hissing tone, as if the neatly typed script he is forced to read from betrays his real opinions. It seems strange to me to think that, given that later I'm on the phone, talking to a friend, and talking entirely in a blank monotone code, reading from my own prepared script just to get through the conversation. At this time, I could put the phone down the back of the couch, pick it up, say yes 6ix times and put it back down, and still be about as engaged in the conversation as I would be with full attention and all ears pressed to the phone. It's Sunday, and my brain has walked out on me like a disgruntled family member...shutting the door behind me, making sure that it's double bolted with a bar on it for good measure...

In Scotland, you wouldn't leave such a door open I suspect - if you did, goods would be flying out of the door - but I think Scotland is it's own worst enemy sometimes in exaggerating these tales of crime, until no one trusts anyone. In my Grans declining years, she would regularly spring out from behind her door like some elderly Scottish Kato to declare that she had heard gangs plotting against her in the laneway. An investigation would generally reveal at best a cheery postman and at worst absolutely nothing with the capability of plotting, unless the rocks had taken against her. I love my Gran, but her decline was depressing, although she wasn't alone in suspecting crime lurked around every corner. A suspicious glance at the bus stop was enough to keep an entire family in their house at night for a solid month. There was a place in Irvine called The Village, a shopping centre that long ago ceased to be properly funded and is now utterly gutted, that was the place I've talked about before with the mysterious blue video cassette in the middle of the video store that just had XXXX on it in black marker pen and no other details. After a while of living in Ayrshire, I was told that the Village was off limits to me, as bad things were going on there, drug deals and prostitutes and over priced loaves of bread at the Co-Op. All these stories did was make me want to go there even more, and it was to my profound disappointment that not only were there no hookers, no obvious drug deals outside of the confusingly placed snooker hall at the back of the video store and worst of all reasonably priced Pan loaves, but the real reason everyone was boycotting The Village was sadly because some Pakistani family had bought the newsagent and had the temerity to call in some tabs. My friend Martin stole some Chewits from out of the newsagents and justified it with racial attitudes that you wouldn't even find on old episodes of Love Thy Neighbour. Nothing has really changed though - people in Scotland still create the bogeyman, as soon as you get off the plane it's all gang this and drug dealer that. What do I say in return to people who come to Kingston to scare them, stay away from that pizza shop, there's a crazy girl dancing to Smashmouth? Mind you, this defiant stance meant that last time I went to a shopping centre which, oddly, has just one shop in it, owned by a Pakistani man with a petition who is holding up the demolition of the entire building simply through grit, determination and a willingness to sell pints of milk at 6 in the morning. I was by now immune to Scottish scare stories and refused to accept any warnings that I should stay from the condemned building - what was the worst that could happen, a stray dog would bail me up and tell some racial insults? When I saw the body curled up in the corner, the one with the head wound struggling to get up from it's puddle based resting place screaming the place down with royal screams, I figured some bogeymen were actually real. Of course, I didn't tell my Mum - I instead focused on the scandalous cost of bread these days, and waited for her cooing agreement...

24 hours later from this collection of musings, and I'm in Big W. I get more profoundly depressed by the day at the decline of my book store - they now have closing down sale signs taped to the bookracks, neatly typed, double spaced, utterly depressing. Panda Eyed girl is working on layby today, although she doesn't seem to do any work regardless of where she is. As I continue my daily search for the AFL Prospectus - and you thought I was looking for some fancy book with big words - Panda Eye Girl at the tail end of a story that she can't trust him, although whoever him is is lost to the winds of the air conditioning system. I didn't realise she was capable of mistrust, I didn't realise she was capable of thinking and walking upright most days, and I feel a bit like I would seeing a child discover there is no Santa Claus. I used to have this friend at school, a real misanthrope who you didn't want to be isolated next to at parties, a hater of men who wouldn't get close to anyone. Over a Boags he would espouse that eventually everyone would screw you over, and that everyone would let you down in the end. As one by one my school friends melted away, I used to think he had a point, but lord knows I never want to be that guy, the DTA guy, the guy at parties expecting that the pinata donkey doesn't contain tasty treats but the bitter taste of disappointment. If he owned a shop, the back door wouldn't just be locked, there'd be an armed guard standing there. The last time I saw him, he didn't even realise no one was listening to him as he sat on the back of a flat bed truck sipping a beer and running through bitterly familiar themes. He was on an unstoppable roll, oblivious to the fact that everyone else at the party was having a fantastic time dancing and pashing around flaming oil drums and listening to the latest tunes. In fact to prove his point he slept with the girlfriend of the partys resident optimist and brought him down to size, thus providing circuitious logic that only a North West Coast Tasmanian can truly grasp. I told a girl at Coles the next day about what had happened, but she didn't get it as it rattled around as an isolated thought in her bewildered brain, and was unwilling to fully engage with the story as we jousted about our weekend over a dirty tray that needed cleaning. Eventually she walked off to get a price check on a bottle of Fruitopia, clacking her Clarks shoes across the tiled floor, and I thought no more about it until I heard a familiar clacking noise as she returned, handed me a bottle of Fruitopia out of the kindness she couldn't express in words - but could express in Hippy brewed fruit drinks - and simply said that my friend was a fuckhead. If you live in Australia, you can imagine the accent the word fuckhead was delivered in, and then she was off again. No need to dissect the human condition in her blog and no real thoughts on life, just fuckheads and non fuckheads for her and sod the complexities of trust. Still, I liked her logic in some ways. Don't be a fuckhead seems as good a way to gain the trust of people as any I suppose...

Like the guy on Underbellys bewilderingly bad Scottish accent, complex issues and criticisms can simply be explained with simple swearing...

2001 - a self help journey as long as you don't have a bus to catch (I am a Miley little man)

I mentioned a few steps ago that I'm having a recurring nightmare, which is fine when I'm asleep and thoughts can formulate and weird things can happen and no one can explain where I'm dreaming about an orange seagull or strange relationships with Megan Corkrey, but I have the 3am guilts as well. These can be partial fragments of regretted conversations, lost loves and friends drifting off down my driveway in their car never to be seen again, or something as simple as not taping episode of Paramount City so I could sit and watch it. I am a terrible sleeper - which is fitting since the band Sleeper are terrible - and I was a lot worse when I was going out with my girlfriend, because the pressure that sleeping in a double bed brought on was just horrible, and I really didn't want to disturb her, not with her nasty year long headache. Anyway, back to when I'm not being Rodney Dangerfield, I had this one panic attack on the floor of someones house once, when I was a sleeping bag. We were crowded into this room because we were staying over after a party, and I suddenly at about 4our in the morning realised I had no idea where the door out was. Under normal non, er, substances I would have been fine with this and gone back to sleep, but it became paramount priority #1A call the FBI that I woke everyone up to work out the configuration of the room and where the door was. As it turned out, the door was right next to my left shoulder, and as the party goers wearily went back to sleep, one of them thinking I was back asleep muttered that it wasn't a good idea to let me drink. So I regret that, that I actually had a panic attack like I was Rebekah Emaloglou on the set of Home and Away. Although Dad has a kid at school who is a selective mute, which is awesome, as she can do her speech in class but then can't answer questions about the speech. There aren't many people stirring at 3am, the funky drummer that used to live next door to me a notable exception, and moments of regrets, and lets be honest here, fleeting fractions of blog ideas, strange insane thoughts, they all stir briefly through my subconscious making me just as likely to wish I was nicer to the fat kid at school I used to pick on as remembering the name of the third Chantoozie. I have an alarm clock with glaring angry angular numbers that mock me as they hang in the air, the three of three 3am curling around my brain and making sure I'm painfully aware that I'm hanging between sleep and having to get up, and my brain never switches off anyway. It's always on, it's always working, a perma conscience that never goes out. If it wasn't like this, I think a lot of things would be easier, and my writings would be Youtube clips a go go. If these fractured thoughts become fractured sentences, then I have to get up, go and make a cup of tea and try and work out just what it all those words mean. Music helps, Steve Burns here, Liz Phair there, but some things are just too strange to make sense even now...

So it's 2001 - a year briefly lit up by a trip home to good old Ayrshire, but mostly dull and boring, although a lot better than my previous year. The year 2000 to me was like John Howards dystopian vision for Australia being like the 1950s - nothing happened, I was perfectly safe, comfortable and relaxed, I lived in a sealed off gated community where I knew all my neighbours and said hello but secretly hated them and thought they there communists, I wore a lot of bad jumpers and I had absolutely no sex at all. As a rough guide, 2001 was the final of my lost triangle years, which started in 1999 when a friend from school never turned up to take me to the Hobart Show the same month my girlfriend and I had what you who love air quotes might call problems, and ended in the New Sydney Hotel in 2002 with drinks, Irish bands singing songs about hating The Yenglish, new friends and oddly me holding a steam cleaner I'd bought Mum for Mothers day. My trip to Scotland had been the first one that felt like a holiday rather than a homecoming, the only baggage I brought on the trip a nice green suitcase rather than anything emotional. It was the last time I saw Dads Sisters Kids, on a nice night out in Paisley, and there was the Geri Halliwell story to enjoy, but as a holiday it was nice, rather than over dramatic like the other couple. Above all though, there was a strange moment of zen when I skipped on a date with my family, which would have been rubbish, tense and involved the sharing of tepidly cooked chips, to take my independent self - and no, I didn't throw my hands up at me, though I thought about it - off to Manchester. As I skipped down the streets with my own credit card and my own ambitions, it felt oddly liberating and quite fantastic. Naturally the natural ambience of the Mancunian shopkeeper found the broad smile on my face utterly disconcerting and I had the swagger back in the pocket quickly, but it couldn't be suppressed for ever. I made one of those self promises people always make that when I returned to Tasmania I would be a different person and do more things and get involved in the community...luckily an old lady in the street had the presence of mind to yell at me for hogging the road as I stood stock still, which was sweet of her. There was no place after all for dreamers or those have moments of self realisation on this particular street, and certainly not for her. In her world, there was only the bus home and things that were impediments to the bus home. I was clearly the latter, and she walked off muttering something about another dose of national service as she took her shopping onto a rickety looking double decker. I find it rather sweet that today I would be that woman, after all, there are impediments to me every day - if I try and look at a Weeds DVD there's always some bogan in a white T-shirt directly in front of it...I'd love to tell the old woman my world view has changed, but she probably has a bus to catch, and I'd just be in the way...

Inspired by this holiday and some self help books read at the airport, I briefly flirted with a get up and go Sanitarium inspired motivational phase. I ate Weetbix, I started jogging, I only watched sensible ABC programs and I worked a bit harder. I also decided that self enlightenment would be achieved through joining things, and not just one piece of a jigsaw to another. This lead to an insane 6ix weeks trying to play soccer with Kingborough which was a complete disaster and lead to a game where I was knackered after 5ive minutes and had to come off again, and me watching a carpark fight between our star striker and his WAG about how she had spent her Yeltour voucher. This didn't stop me from living my own self help manual, and within days of this out of puff setback I had signed up for a drama class in North Hobart and was puttering my car into the deserted car park after work for no real reason at all other than I thought this was what normal people did, go off on whims, have adventures, maybe put on a character voice or two. It's so unlike me normally, I can only conclude I was swept up in some sort of post holiday madness. I am a reasonable thespian at a local level - I mean I've played Jesus convincingly twice despite being a pasty white Scot, so give me something. The second time I was on a skateboard going through palms. Or was I piggy backed by a fat kid? I can't remember. The improvisational exercises were like shooting fish in a barrel to me, after all I had studied at least 3hree episodes of Who's Line, and suddenly I was the star of the community hall, the prize student, although I think the teacher wished I had more movie star looks - I told him Sick Boy from Trainspotting was a movie character, but he didn't look impressed. The teacher was restrained camp rather than flamboyantly rich as a character, but the sad thing for him was the number of people who turned up when the class was free compared to the number who turned up when it was 5 bucks. He looked genuinely upset to see all his prettiest students leave (or not see them I guess) because they would rather buy a skinny latte. I can still see him looking a bit dejected as her stared around the room getting a class that more looked like Rob Brough than Rob Lowe. He took it on the chin though in the end. However, by the time he had foisted on us a terrible 1960s script that was supposed to be witty and urbane but which felt like a Comedy Company sketch, I figured it was time to quit the class myself. I still went through the motions of putting on a play in front of a paying audience though before I quit, and they were kind enough to laugh tepidly at the jokes. Sadly for my future aspirations, there were no agents in the audience, and if there were, they'd just be real estate agents anyway, without the power to cast anyone in a major Hollywood picture...even if they were looking for someone to play Jesus...

However, the most significant part of this 11 week course in the hall was that I made a friend - I can't remember his name, but lets call him Neil. He looked like a Neil. And when I first saw him, he was kneeling because he had just fallen over. Neil was a nice guy, and I was happy with the prospect of having at least one friend again. We talked a bit about his girlfriend and mix tapes, and it was all good. At least it was until I gave him a lift home one night. Caught up in the exuberant mood of the truly self empowered who have watched too many episodes of Ricki Lake, I began a quite nonsensical conversation about my goals and ambitions - it was far too much to lay on someone who was just being essentially pleasant, and I was embarrassed to bring it up when I realised what I had started, but I still jumped in boots and all. It was a feature of me in this triangle, mouthy ambitions and really weird interactions with people where I would just talk nonsense like I was in a therapy session, and as I tailed off, Neil said something incredibly profound...that I was driving in the wrong lane. I thought he was really onto something, what a deep thing to say about my life...until I realised he meant it literally, that I was on the wrong side of the road and had to fix it before I ploughed into a truck. Obviously we aren't friends now, and I certainly don't blame him for that. In fact, the only person from that drama class I ever saw was a girl called Anne Maree or something, who I hugged for an hour in a pub one night. Yes, an hour. In the end, the whole get up and go phase fizzled out with minimal damage, coming to a spluttering end before I did something really crazy and starting having a motto or something. In fact, at work the other week during a moment of acute poignancy and attempt to motivate me, I quoted the lyrics to S Club 7s Bring It All Back and people took it as gravitas. My only ambition these days is to find a local to grow old in, and worse, on my fridge circled in red pen is a series of dates that I'm expected to be a happy little Vegemite and get out of bed, and I can't be bothered getting faster faster on my feet...one of the things I'm supposed to go to though is some play, somewhere in the sticks, and I wonder if there's someone there, some awkward friendless kiddie just struggling to fit in hopeful it can bring him someone to talk to...it's too painful to think of, and thankfully, all of that need to try and self improve is behind me...I'm happy with who I am...

Unless you know someone who needs a Jesus...my speech against the tax agents is particularly impressive...mighty even...

The greatest firefighting hero since Wally Wombat

Depressed by the melancholy in the closing down bookstore today, the gaps in the bookstore and the furrowed brow on the bearded classical music fan, I had to get out of dodge today, go for a walk and clear my head. Not that Rosny offers a wide variety of walking options, there's no out there trail one can suddenly wander along unless you feel like skipping around the edge of the K-Mart car park like an unemployed skippy hobo. I decided to walk to library, and take the black or red roulette spin that a computer would be free without a lousy kid sitting there. My progress, and my natural walking gait is fast paced and go getting, with significant swinging of the arms, was held up by a fat girl in a business outfit who had cellulite staying on her legs in a timeshare deal and total control of the footpath. She was onn her mobile phone with not a care in the world, and was wobbling over the footpath like a bulky car with busted treads as she spoke loudly for everyone to hear, ensuring that she was the absolute centre of attention - I had an acid flashback to sitting in assembly when I was a kid and a bememoth of a girl would get up and loudly tell about her efforts for Amnesty, making sure everyone knew how wonderful she was. As the skirt wobbled from left to right in different directions to her thighs, she suddenly decided to say at random and in a screechy fat vocal chords voice, with extra hiss, that no matter what anyone else thinks of mint, she doesn't care. Why mint? Why such a strident stance on mint? And who's been dissing mint I wonder as I have a particularly awkward realisation that at this moment, we are the only two people around - the kids are mostly back at school, there's a bum on the horizon somewhat more svelte that her own, and we're walking in a strange two step. Of the two of us, she is controlling the situation, after all, I'm stuck in her world, she's not listening to tales of Waterproof Blonde songs and lime spiders. Conversationally trapped, unable to get around her, I turn around and give up, as she veers wildly into the distance, probably thinking of eating a whole box of after dinner chocolates. There's so much time to kill, and so little to do here at the moment - the shopping centre has a big upping at it's majesty and how great it is sign affixed to it, underneath which people who work there gather to smoke and look incredibly pissed off with unintentional poignancy. There's a guy who works in like a phone shop or something who's always standing there with his girlfriend, and when I walk past them today, they look like they've had an argument, but it's really hard to tell - they may possibly just be incredibly contented. In the air of their cigarette smoke and the light that makes it the best photo no one has ever taken, they stand stock still and entirely silent, and although they don't realise it, they have taken everyones attention, simply by where they are standing and their cool poses. To break their impeccable cool, and/or their embitterred Brown/Rihanna style upset, I want to ask them their opinions about mint, but there's already been just been too much thinking about other people for one day, and to turn it back to me, I'm drinking one of the most relieving bottles of water I've ever had to try and parch m...yeah, I can see why today has been turned over to others...

It's been a day for that - my e-mail lighting up with self congratulations from one of my friends patting herself on the back for donating 50ty dollars to the bushfire appeal. She's changed her Facebook status to reflect this self congratulation, her donation now taking on, in her own mind, some sort of status of Mandela like qualities. If I had leprosy, I'm poking her for sure. God bless charity and all, but she's waiting on the halo. Maybe for 100 bucks. There's a few people wandering around like this today, you can hear them idly chatting around the centre, maybe about how much an injured koala has inspired them to do something zany for charity. A few years ago, I began sponsoring a an African child, which as the old joke goes means I get my name on her footy jumper - and no, she's never told me if there's ever been snow in Africa this Xmas or anything about clanging chimes of doom. I didn't do this to get a pat on the back, I did it because I had a very strange whim one day where after all these years that hairy bloke on the Christian Childrens ad talking about a caring home maker called Angela Toth finally made me do something. Every so often, she sends me a terrible drawing of a tree in lieu of any kind of progress update, and that's as far as it goes, and the only reason anyone knows this is because, after three years, I completely forgot myself and left one of her more abstract works - possibly a chicken, possibly a commentary on the state of Ugandan politics, I don't know - on the fridge and Mum asked what it was. There's a woman today who wouldn't leave her light idly on the fridge. She's standing enraptured in her own glory whilst waiting for a sandwich, talking loudly about how she survived the bushfires in 1967, the Hobart ones, and so she has a unique insight into how the survivors feel. I'm not sure if this is true - I got bit by a dog once but I don't profess expertise on shark attacks - but she seems very sure of herself, and how great she is for ten upping my friend and raising 500 bucks for the appeal through a mix of peer pressure and zany events, her pug nose wrinkling in excitement. I don't know, I'm cynical I guess, I prefer the quiet approach, the essential goodness of a volunteer firefighter to someone organising wacky tie day and putting in 2 bucks when it's their time to chip in. In mid sentence the woman stops talking, sips some of her water from the bottle, and when I look at her, I realise it's a quite deliberate pause, to allow her friends to chip in with cooing admiration. She's scanning them, and luckily for her, they coo on cue. Suitably impressive, she screws the top on her water bottle and begins a rather strident lecture on flame patterns. Apparently they can leap over roads. This woman had the presence of mind in 1967 to calmly take notes for future reference. By the time she's moved on to her own expertise and how annoyed she is no one has called her for personal advice, I've luckily been served by a perky blonde versed in by the book personal service, and I escape before the lady decides that I need any more of a personal lesson on the horrors of 1967...and no, she didn't mean The Seekers...

My mind drifts off to another time, another pub a long time ago. A conspiritorial conversation in a roped off private part of a roped off private pub that obviously wasn't that exclusive if they let me in. It had the air of desperation all of those places have, especially in Tasmania where the clients tends to be, like, high up lawyers and people who just got a workers comp cheque and the music is tinny and strained and you begin to wonder why you are paying 6ix bucks a beer to sit here - I'm sure I went to somewhere once that I sat on milk crates. Did I imagine that? A friend is dominating the conversation, and it's going nowhere. It's 3 in the morning, past the point of courtesy surely, the music in my head now even tinnier, the beer prices ramped up in a last desperate attempt to leave. No one can get a word in, a conversational dominator is spilling his guts. Time is passing slowly, the rhythmic beats of a distant Shakira, singing through a sewer grate it sounds like, seeming slow and distant. There's a story being told, it has no form, no structure, no plot twists, no beginning, no middle, and more pertinently, no end. It's about a parent, a parent who may or may not have been a spy, and may or may not have a secretive tattoo. There's no deflecting the story, all my jokes about tattoo, fantasy island, Russian girl bands...nothing...I remember catching the eye of the barmaid, she was looking at me with a kindly smile, but I couldn't extract myself from the conversation to go and talk to her, and I rue my kindness as much as I rue how much I spent at Superdry in London, for eventually she left to go and stocktake some Samboys, and I was left with my own thoughts being invaded like lounge rooms were invaded by this guys super spy dad. Trapped in his conversational web, every word, every fractured sentence and over exaggerated paragraph lingered in the air like the after effects of the smoke machine that was still pumping where the band was a few hours earlier. Eventually I excused myself to get some Samboy chips, the sympathetic barmaid was beautiful, my ideal girl, the perfect mix of blonde hair, and slightly, just slightly North West Coast bogan tendencies, and we made small talk, the 3am atmosphere breaking down any notions of out of your league or anything like that, the ennui induced by her repetitive job broken down by a few jokes about Samboys vs Twisties. There's no one who can't be wooed by a chip comparison. I wouldn't say the conversation was flirtacious, but it was a good conversation, but I had to break it off when she began criticising the conversation I was trapped in - I had to say to say he was my friend, and she didn't understands friends listen to other friends tell really boring stories. It's what makes us friends. I left her looking confused, and returned to my table, just in time for the conversation to have moved onto to the tattoo on his left shoulder - the last I saw of her was as she headed out the back, shaking her head, changing the CD from Shakira to Britney...it could have been so good...

I break free in the end of other peoples obsessions, other peoples breakdowns that I see at their work desk when even the act of eating a chicken wrap seems too much to bear. My house is silent and cold, my own monument to my own personal foibles and obsessions, dated football magazines piling up in the corner, old CDs from bands long since broken up and working more menial jobs. Sometimes if I listen really carefully, I can hear myself as a child, arguing with my Dad in the days before I realised Dad didn't really argue, he'd just say something and then say 1-0 to me and declare himself the winner, and Mum would walk in hands on hips to tell me to gie us aw peace. I'm sure my repititious conversation about sport bores my Mum just as much as the lady with the mad fire fighting skills bored me today, but my Mum at least doesn't blog about it. The kid I was at 5ive, the overly self confident show and tell loving wean with endlessly fascinating marbles to show everyone, he loved being the centre of attention. Give that kid a stage and a microphone and you were guaranteed an hour of talking - that's all gone now, eroded by a million alleged slights and social faux pas, self awareness and poor choices of footwear. My e-mail whirrs and hums as I sit down, to read another piece of shameless self promotion from my friend - apparently she donated 50ty dollars to the bushfire appeal if everyone wasn't aware. She puts this in the middle of her e-mail as if it's some casually remembered fact, when the glisten of the handed over yellow note is all that seems to be keeping her going. I delete the e-mail quickly - it's too much for one day. The self important trendy DJs giggling profusely at their own jokes and their own self created world also go off, as does the sports chat on ESPN. Everything finishes quiet, even my imagination gets shut off. Finally, I am free to be self confident, free to ponder whatever I want to poner, and free of anyone trying to big themselves up, no overly proud gifts to charity, no anti mint crusades to listen to...the silence is pure, purer than Dalry heroin, and it's all mine, a well earned peace that seems harder to attain every day...

And with this free thought, the first thing I think is I really want a Polly Waffle...

Reduced to clear, but where will I get my books now?

So my local bookstore is closing down - in my blissful IPOD induced ignorance I didn't even notice until I went to look for a football book today and found myself face to face with one of those resolutely trying to be upbeat but failing signs that closing down businesses have, the ones where they try and convince you that the decline of the economy and the loss of jobs will at least allow you to get a cheap book. I guess this means the bearded guy with the classical music IPOD will fade from my life, curse this economic downturn causing me to lose sources of anecdotes. I wonder if he thinks - and I really don't know, they could just be relocating, the anti jolliness of the sign could be a trick - if only people like me bought the Popbitch book instead of reading it instore...the first business I can ever remember closing was this sports shop in Irvine, a really popular one - I might have mentioned it before, you could get really cool soccer tops and big boss shoes that made you look like a basketball player even if from the shoes up you were just a skinny white guy who certainly had no right to use any kind of black mans language no matter who stereotypical. Then one day, literally overnight without warning, it was gone, gutted of stock, and there were piles and piles of letters under the door. My friends and I would walk past it and remember the good times, perhaps the first genuine regrettful nostalgia I ever had. Not Sarah my first girlfriend or good times playing with my He-man, no, my first bout of nostalgia involved standing outside a broken sports shop with money in my hand going remember when you could get a South African soccer top at an affordable price? I'd say it was the first sign of turning old really, pining for 1989 in 1990. There was a woman in the bookstore today though, a Diane Craig lookalike in beige casual slacks, all spare time and high self esteem, who was actually bartering over the price off a book in her hand - it was really rubbing it in to be holding a book that was already marked for death, a stock item from a failed store, and demanding that more be sliced off the price. I thought the bearded guy was going to kill her, but he's a pacifist, and as he calmly explained that the sale price was final, I could see his thoughts drifting deep out the window, perhaps a beautiful piece of classical music filling his brain. Whatever happens, I wish him well. Maybe the next few years will be like this, just wandering around listening to Shanks and Bigfoot and seeing stores decline - it makes me think of the high street in my home town in Scotland, where you step off the minibus and it feels like tumbleweed should roll past your feet, the top end just a library and several faded dreams, boarded up shops and charity stores selling re-possessed and donated goods to those brave enough to venture. I don't think it'll get that bad, despite the alarmist tendencies of the papers. At least I hope not - if they make blue eye shadow girl head to the dole office, after all her paperwork based dilligence, that's just a crime...

The automon at work meanwhile continues her own special brand of martyrdom, unable to lead because she's too busy leading, if that makes sense - lost in indecision she takes the task of lowest common denomination, and does it well, and calls it management. There's a pile of work on her desk and she's fussing over pens. I have a pile of e-mails to get through, most of them about football - no matter what the world brings, I know whenever football season starts, we start feeling like better friends, simply through the medium of mutual understanding what coaches should do. The automon meanwhile will always have her pens - as far as I know, her partner, and I'm still old fashioned enough to call it her boyfriend if I had my way, still doesn't have a job. And he still looks like Mark Ridgeway. He wiles away his hours at home cleaning the house as far as I can tell, and probably feeding the dog. It's a little strange to think of his reduced circumstance, as in his field he was reasonably successful, and sometimes I think of him as I was when I was unemployed, sitting in an attic playing ATARI, eating rice Krispie squares and fending off midday Jehovahs, one of whom told me God didn't like ATARI - or was it slothfulness? I forget - one of those vices. As I drift into some kind of reminisce about the quality of those rice krispie squares, and they really were delicious, a friend of mine comes on the radio, purposefully donating with all ears on her to the bushfire appeal in return for them playing a crappy song. I donate more subtly, and I'd at least demand double Britney for such a donation. I know my Mum if she was listening to any thoughts I had on the decline of businesses and the prospect of job losses and the fact I can't get books anymore would say something like as long as you are alive you are winning, and she said it about 200 times while Kochie stood there dressed like John Howard on the Sunrise bushfire special. Whenever a major disaster happens, I think everyone feels a great appreciation for life and vows to not worry about the little annoyances, but then the little minor problems still grind - I know when, like, Beslan happened, I was so determined not to be irritated by minor issues, those poor kids and so on, and within hours was annoyed my toast was burned. At least I felt something I suppose, there's no appreciation for life with the automon as she fusses over the pens endlessly, procastinating the day away with trivia. The radio DJ makes a beseeching point of pointing out all the horrible things the bushfires have taken away in great detail and how lucky everyone is to be alive and all the things you should say- to my great embarrassment, I realise I've skipped over a page on the bushfires to read an online page about Chris Brown and Rihanna, and feel a bit guilty. The automon doesn't listen to the radio though - she genuinely believes she is in reduced circumstances as a single income family, as socially bereft as the owner of a burned out house, and maybe she's right in her own mind, but I know Mum would tell her to get a grip. Mind you, traumas are all relative - the mango juice I'm drinking at at the moment is absolutely terrible and it's annoying me. As this minor inconvenience turns briefly into the worst thing that's happened all day, another appeal flickers across the scene, another pre-montaged movingly themed montage of fire induced despair, and, well, what else is there to say...the juice it still terrible though...

I know when Dad was unemployed, he devoted his spare time not to the mysteries of 1980s game consoles, but to freeing hostages. He had a petition and signs and everything, and I had to go door to door one night risking life and Ayrshire limb to try and get John McCarthy out of Beirut. He never thanked me - John McCarthy I mean, Dad probably bought me some fruit creams from the ice cream van. It's one of the few things I've volunteered for, and I went out and about in my little shell suit with a clipboard with all the self righteousness of the professional do gooder, although I was rather uncynical in those days, and I probably believed my 6ix signatures and the one I made up myself - Didier Six didn't really live in my street - would really cause a hostage to be released. I wasn't long for thinking so positively - although Mum and Dad, despite Dads continuing merry go round of terrible supply teaching gigs, would always make sure I had everything I wanted, even that fancy expensive pair of FILA boots I wanted. So my reduced circumstances were entirely social, not financial. When we lived in Penguin we lived in a great house with a big hill you could roll down and it felt like you knew everyone in the town - it wasn't like that in Scotland, one street would feel completely alien to the other. I know that our street was determined by the people who lived there that it would be a great street, the people decided that even though it wasn't great, they would all get on and work together to sort out problems. So even though I was a little blinded by self pity, I did have good friends, and one day as we sat on a little patch of grass watching the world go by, the lead singer of a popular band drove past on the way to visit her mother who lived around the corner. We all waved, and she waved back, and it felt incredibly exciting. Six months of her so later, her band was completely out of favour, and when she drove past no one would wave and she looked quite sad. Her social circumstances were as reduced as mine, although she probably had groupies when all I had was Gary Linekers superstar soccer on the AMSTRAD. It was one of the first times I realised that people failing made people happy. In Penguin, at least to your face, people were supportive - the prospect of them being quite the opposite behind your back had simply never occured to me. So I would listen quite intently at the little mini bus stop, to peoples tales about what the fat stocky girl round the corner with the cross tattoo was really doing with her life or wee Wullie losing his rag in the supermarket and causing a scene. I was young and confused at the absolute glee these stories would be told with, and these days those people would be on Myspace with a special group set up for all the news of fat stocky cross girl, but in those days, they had Mystop...it was definitely a steep learning curve, steeper than trying to cling onto the size of the bus when the driver was late, and failed to apply the brakes because he was in a hurry...

There's no one shuffling about the Kingston shopping mall. I queue for my groceries, having indulged myself in the purchase of a tasty cake. I miss my reckless spending side - I wish I didn't have responsibilities and could just splurge on DVDs like a crazy person like I used to. Counting every penny has become the side effect of living alone. It's not reduced circumstances - it's just being a tight arse. My pizza shop is gone though, replaced by an extended bottle shop wall facade. The one that used to be suspiciously free of pizza ingredients, so it looked like a front for some sort of other business. The place looks in fading health, although most shopping centres look like that eventually. When I was in Harrods, surrounded by opulence and pets that needed a nap, there was someone who was complaining it wasn't as good as it was in the 70s. The supermarket is empty, but the queue is slow moving, as I'm being served by a part timer, a casual who is 1/2 the age of me, scared to pick up an orange unless she breaks a nail. It says a lot about the passing of time that instead of flirting with her I curse her lack of professionalism. Once you are thinking of the pace of the queue instead of trying to work in a chat up line, you aren't too far from a cardigan, although she's not as hot as she thinks she is, mascara failing to hide her Warrane upbringing. She doesn't look at me, or if she does, it's only to ponder the brightness of my Barcelona shirt. She doesn't realise her supervisor is watching her intently, just like mine did when I used to fail to tell the difference between a tangello and a tangerine. Her supervisor is only slightly older than her, but clearly takes things more seriously, her expression suggesting a serious talking to is in order, maybe with the use of a flipchart and a computer print out. Warraneblonde doesn't see it coming, she keeps filing her nails and taking her time in between scans. Dad says at school now, they can't write that kids are lazy anymore on their report card, even if they are. Warrane blonde is about to be told though, I can see that because the supervisor makes a not without taking her eyes off her, and I move on before the evaluation begins. If things go really badly, perhaps they'll part company there and then, decide it's not working out and she'll never scan another melon again. I think a lot about these little moments, and I have since I saw Jannie, her of the car park wisdom, storm out of an office, chest defiantly pointing towards the exit, refusing to let anyone see her cry as she left the building. And I was the one who was lazily scanning the melons, thinking what's she so upset about, she can just bag another job...I walk off towards my car, greatful for what I have, hopeful that it stays the same, and slightly annoyed that in all my thoughtful noticing, I forgot to pick up any bread...

That's the trouble with musings and observations on a blog, they don't really get you any bread...

He dreams of corporate boxes, he instead chokes on Robitussin

The apex of Scottish society these days - and I apologize if I've been harsh on midwinter Ayrshire in the early 90s, the discontent of my own mind and the Thatcherite/Woganesque awful cultural grind made it seems worse than it probably was - currently stands like this. You'll be in conversation with someone, say over a French cake and a cup of tea or if you are really lucky a Yum Yum. Whether you have asked how so and so is getting on or not is irrelevant, it will come up eventually if this particular aspiration is fulfilled. The pinnacle of achievement for anyone in a workforce in Scotland is now free tickets to a corporate box at, say, Old Trafford or Anfield or some kind of soccer ground. I was thrown by this because I always thought, given Scottish people don't go out on Saturday night, the best achievement you could gain was the latest fanciest satellite TV gadget. When I lived in Ayrshire, we were a trial town for Sky TV and we got things like Eurosport before anyone else (late 80s womens wrestling, so hot!), and it was in the paper and everything, Dad getting to say how exciting it was we could be the first people in the UK to say the phrase 58 channels and nothing on...when the person who knows someone who has achieved this feat of corporate boxing, they will say that and then retract their voice from the conversation, allowing a suitable pause for you to jump in with your admiration and impressed glances. Strangely, in the next of my old next door neighbours kid, I didn't feel that envious - he was stuck in England in a job he hated, and when I knew him all he was remarkable for his aforementioned man crush on the school bus driver. He's the kind of person I see every 4our years who always says when I'm on holiday we'll catch up for a coffee (as maturation has kicked in, it's stopped being a pint) and we never do. Still, I managed to make the just the right amount of impressed cooing, and the moment passed until the Rangers game came back on the telly and I didn't need to talk anymore. Scotland can be funny like that - despite allegedly being anti snobbery and chest beating about everyone being working class, most people are desperate to accumulate trinkets and cachets. This is a good thing, but wee Leanne round the corner gets herself a Ford, and suddenly she's forgot where she's came from in the neighbourhood gossip. As soon as you get off the plane, everyone makes sure to tell you the last thing you should do is live in Ayrshire, but if you do get out, and move to Tasmania, you are a snob and a sell out. It's all incredibly complex and strange, but luckily, the cakes are super delicious, which usually makes the stories of success vaguely bearable. Besides which, most standard issue Scottish council houses have nice big windows that you can stare out and try and work out just what that tree in the back garden is supposed to be growing. Peaches? Oranges? Sometimes you can get through an entire composite fruit salad before you have to re-engage with the conversation...what's that you say, two tickets for Ibrox? Fascinating, how many sales did he make to get them...

My primary school in Irvine would routinely drum into us the need to escape. My maths teacher would disparage anyone who's ambitions didn't involve moving abroad and never coming back. I wonder if it was her idea to take us to Prestwick Airport that time, for a taste of the good life, a school trip largely to sit in the first class seat of an Air Canada plane for 120 seconds of trouble free reclining before you were turfed back out into the real world and mocked for having dreams above your station and a parent who had no job. My Mum, in one of her largely undervalued attempts to make me popular, had bought me a bag of warehouse white chocolate bars from one of those big 200 cans of beans for a pound stores on the edge of town - a Thatcherite enterprise that for once worked - and I doled them out to everyone, vaguely aware that this was not a path I wanted to follow to gain popularity, but greatful for the attention anyway. I know that despite this, the first thing that would have happened would have been someone would have probably mocked the silver generic label of the bar, even as they said to me how thoughtful I was for bringing white chocolate (I was all out of myrrh obviously). Still, such chocolate based social issues couldn't compare to the hormonal charge given by flight attendant Stephanie, a vintage late 80s Canadian beauty who sounded suspiciously like she was from Dalry and was putting an accent on, but to quote Nelson from the Simpsons some of us prefer illusion to despair. She had a personable manner, blue eye shadow (settle), late 80s Kim Wilde style hair and a short skirt and was probably the closest any of us had got at that stage to being hit on in the name of professionalism - none of us had met Bicardi models at that time. She was very chatty to us all as she ehed and aahed over us, fastening our seatbelts as we strapped ourselves in. We didn't obviously go anywhere, it was a first class experience without the flying, as we went behind the curtain and just sat in the seat, got a free milk or something, and then got off again after Stephanie showed us her whistle (stop it!). It was a little like meeting the Swedish volleyball team and then watching them play volleyball. As a day out, it was one of my more interesting school trips - I think it was meant to be educational, perhaps a chance to show us what could be achieved if we buckled down, but that wasn't made absolutely clear, it was left to us to decode the message, and the boys were just perving and the girls were trying to steal the inflight magazine, so it didn't sink in as it should. It says a lot through for the strange values of the Scottish education system that once we had said goodbye to Stephanie and articles about Estonian wine, we were given a demonstration on airport security that was so thorough and detailed it seemed designed to give our criminal corps something of their own to aspire to. You could see them muttering and looking the way all the normal kids were looking at Stephanie, debating as to whether or not now they had learned all the tricks of customs if they could smuggle tobacco into France. As school trips go, there was definitely something for everyone...

Still, such a small glimpse into a better world of bigger seats and hostesses that didn't look like they worked for Jetstar didn't inspire me to work hard and achieve, nor did the Lamborghini I circled in a Guinness Book Of Records one year, and I didn't end up smuggling anything into France, although didn't stop a painful search of my boots in Paris. I might not have flown first class, and Stephanie has never poured me coffee and spoke in a bewildering mixed accent, but I did get into a corporate box one night - by blatantly lying, which most of the people in there had done at some stage anyway. Thanks to a relative lack of security in more innocent times at the Telstra Dome and low attendance, I was able to sneak into a Melbourne football club - and so you know, no one supports Melbourne, so it's pretty easy to do - function and help myself to a mix of sandwiches and free drink. No one was watching the game, I was handed a selection of business cards just in case I was important and the whole thing seemed kind of joyless and depressing, like a big bank function or a timeshare meeting. Whenever someone, to use a Scottish expression, bums their chat about going into a corporate box, my own experience doesn't seem to correlate to anything especially memorable, although that everything was free seems to impress most people. Why this is the most aspirational dream of the Scottish middle class still seems beyond me, but I did have a nice chat with Jim Stynes, one of Melbournes old players, about Celtic rings which seems completely surreal in hindsight. As the bedraggled cocktail dress wearing WAGs bypassed me on their way to pick up footballers, and I was left more or less alone with a plate of cocktail franks and a dispossessed sense of social fatigue, I realised that I spent most of the function holding a plastic viking helmet - on the way in, the Viking chocolate people had given me it free as a promotion, and I had swanned in, pretended to support Melbourne and back them financially, and all the while to the bemusement of the 3hree people in attendance I had been clutching an amusing novelty prop. At which point a drunk but utterly amiable Bob Skilton, a former footballer from what you might call the good old days, stumbled past and giggled something about how much he liked my hat. I shook his hand, he gave me a business card, and left a rather bedraggled looking DJ trying to keep the party going to gain his nominal fee as I virtually turned out the party lights...I'm sure that not all corporate boxes have such bewilderingly inept gatherings but it was definitely a glimpse that not everything was worth the price of admission, even if it was free. When I went outside, a simpering employee made sure I had enjoyed myself and offered to get my car out of the car park or something like that. Morally guilty, I shuffled off a little dejected, fully aware that no matter what I might say out loud, I'm more comfortable eating a pie in a stand surrounded by the general public than I am swapping business cards with the regional employee of the month at a lighting firm while people are fighting over the last prawn sandwich to the strains of Shanks and Bigfoot...somedays I'm glad I'm like that, and somedays I'm not, and given I'm Scottish, catholic and prone to guilt, neither seems like a satisfactory outcome...

My cousin, for what it's worth, died of overwork trying to get these little days here, tickets to there, maybe even a boat later in life - all seems kind of pointless now. At least he tried I guess. There are days I think with a dose of ambition and effort I could be doing better in life - certainly I could be at the cricket in Sydney instead of being in my house choking on Robitussin because I have everyones favourite kind of cough, a chesty one. Mind you, I have a friend who in the maelstrom of an economic downtorn that makes even bragging about your quality of chocolate biscuits seems vulgar, could lose his job, and he was the classic go getter, trying to sell product in bars to the bemusement of everyone and he was willing to move around the country to get ahead. On Tuesday morning, I'll drive past a million school kids going back to their studies, and wonder for a moment about what path they will take - whether like me, the homework never comes out of the bag and they'll think about other things like whatever happened to Shanks and Bigfoot anyway or if they'll be determined and sign up for extra classes, and then I'll move on mentally because I'm amount to plough into the back of an SUV - should really pay attention to the road. Besides which, my e-mail box is now full of invites to go to Kermandie football oval - it doesn't have a corporate box, just a big log fire, which seems both cool and within my social status. After all, it was one year ago today I achieved the pinnacle of this states society - a tent at the Hobart Cup near the Win television tent. The effect of social grandeur was rather ruined by the sight of relatively drunken semi famous Tasmanians falling in the dirt, two of our own party engaging in seething mutual loathing, and by a man sitting on the roof of his car with his arm around two Asian prostitutes. My long borne out theory is, no matter what the occasion, social barriers come down because of alcohol and everyone just ends up drunk and dancing to Nutbush City Limits or The Black Eyed Peas. A gimlet eyed social wannabe high on life and drunk on Midori accosted our party to engulf us in a busty hug and proclaim that life didn't get any better than the Hobart Cup - well, I presume that was the implication it really came out as li my ooh great - and maybe to her it didn't, but I declined to agree. I had long ago stopped social climbing, and I wasn't about to start now. Besides which, by the time she released her hug to run over to hug a newsreader, well, I realised I not only wasn't about to start, frankly, I wouldn't be capable of such fakery...

Mind you, my Mum can still bring up I had a marquee at the horse racing and have been in a corporate box at the football when she has a yum yum, so I've done something to make her proud...

I can do a backbend, I cannot pot a red

Many years ago, when I was a callow pale skinned youth with only a robot obsessed girlfriend for conversational company, my friend and next door neighbour invited me to a snooker hall somewhere in Largs. This was a very exciting grown up thing to do, as there would be a convivial atmosphere, full length snooker tables that actually managed to fit in a room (I had a pool table that didn't fit into our spare room, so you would play shots from the south end with the cue 1/2 way up the artexed wall), a smoky haze in the days before Roy Castle taught us a smoky haze was a bad thing, and maybe if we pulled just the right face, the chance of a beer. As it turned out, the snooker hall was in a suspiciously crack den like atmosphere, the snooker tables were so big that no one potted a ball for an hour, and no one wanted to admit the night had lost it's fizz like the McDonalds style coke we were forced to sip on when the barkeep saw through our flimsy unbroken voices. Just as we were about to collect our coats, still loudly proclaiming that Largs was the best baize town in the whole damn world but with an unconvincing tone, a fat man in an aqua blue tracksuit with sharply jagged patterns came in, and to quote the song, everyone knew his name, and with the ludicrously overpriced drinks he was ordering for everyone, they were certainly glad he came. I don't know much about him, but this was his second home, clearly a converse paradise that only he could see, as people came from everywhere to say hello and clap his dog (that means give it a pat, not applaud it's rendition of Old Man River). I never found out if he was a crime boss, some sort of ducking and diving Del Boy figure or just a fat alchoholic, but at that stage in my life, I was strangely envious of such a sense of belonging and kinship. After all, this was relatively early in my stint in Scotland, and I was still desperately homesick for the mythical beauty of Upper Burnie Video and Big Ms, so any kind of belonging would have been fantastic. It was only just as we left, as he stumbled up to laughs behind his back and missed an easy red in the left pocket, that I realised my aspirational figure of belonging was actually just a drunken bum, who had traded in his dignity the same day he traded in his fashion sense. It was a strange moment for me, a rare moment I actually had built someone up and seen them fall down in the space of one poorly framed moment of snooker. All I knew was he still had a place to belong, and that put him one up on me. His heaven may have been hollow, a ball of nothing and poorly constructed faux white soul selections on the jukebox, and his station in life was such he couldn't possibly hope for something more, but it was a start...

It was abundantly clear to me that I while I didn't want his long range potting ability, side part or highly flammable tracksuit, I did more or less want such a refuge, somewhere where I could feel comfortable amenable conversation without the posturing or conversational dead ends. It had been a confusing evening after all, since I had envied the living and tracksuited dead, but who could I explain it to? Certainly not my Dad, searching for his own sense of belonging among the equally living dead, or the students of Auchinleck Academy to give them their official title, living the glamorous life of a supply teacher who always got the last of the sandwiches literally and metaphorically. Debbie wasn't much help either - she'd got it into her head that Maltesers were disgusting and couldn't talk about anything else. Plus it was the early 90s, no one had invented blogs, just some program on the AMSTRAD where you could ask the computer questions, and even it sounded bored at my musings. I was lucky though, I had a friend who would listen to anything I said, the boy who lived round the corner Chris, red of hair, endlessly amused by a cartoon in a computer magazine which wrapped up a squirrel three panel with a nut joke, always playing soccer with his toys and demanding that I provide the commentary. I figured he had a mature head on his shoulders, so I could ask him a question or two about the spurious nature of belonging - about the politics of envy, about all sorts of things really. We could sit with a Wispa bar and I could talk out my problems and the woes of loneliness and my pining for a Choc Pine Big M from the fridge of a popular milk bar in Penguin. I could explain the nature of an aspirational figure, it would clear my ch...well, that was the intention, I still got a Wispa bar after all, but I got about two sentences into a well rehearsed plea for understanding before he cut me off simply by putting the toys down, looking at me and imploring me to commentate. Had I been older and wiser, I would have realised that this was a form of belonging - the invitation to the snooker club, the invitation to commentate, the sharing of chocolate, I had been accepted, but it didn't feel like it at the time. I would have walked the short distance to my house, no doubt overwhelmed with self pity and frustration, feeling like all role models are flawed, all understanding lost, all homesickness clouding reasonable judgement. Of course, at that age, such judgements are fleeting, figures of admiration exist to be torn down, and a feeling of deep loneliness even in the midst of a crowd and with a girlfriend pass quickly once you get a can of Irn Bru from the fridge, and Paramount City is on TV. Debbie, incidentally, said in the future no one would be lonely because there would be robots, but then, I would expect nothing else...

Many years later, a boy in a neatly pressed uniform is sitting bleary eyed and hungover in a small cramped office - it's midday, the boy is staring at the files and notes of a million students before him, in a guidance counsellors office which may or may not have been a cupboard, the tension palpable as it is widely expected by now that I (for that boy was me!) should have a plan or a focus for my life, or at least something to talk about in this scheduled against my will appointment. She has got me a job at the ABC though, so I have to attened and be nice, and hopefully pretend like I have a career plan, maybe continuing my staggering success interviewing Hungarian ultra marathon runners at 7even in the morning. Instead, after several seconds of non committal drifting and conversational dead ends where my brain is still soaked in tequila and can't work out what a metaphor is, the guidance counsellor takes off her glasses, flashes me a thoroughly professional smile and begins to talk about whether I have any heroes. It's such a generic conversation, designed to kill time when the student witters on for a while, so much like my Dad when he sets a test in silence just so he can read the paper, it almost loops around to become a thoughtful question. So I give it something of a thoughtful answer, after some consideration and clock watching I recap about the man in the tracksuit and how he proved anyone could be an aspirational figure given the right, if ultimately twisted, reasoning. It's designed to be a somewhat intelligent response, something she can ponder, maybe respond to, something other than a generic reply from a bored child...it's midway through the story I realise she's absolutely not listening to me. If she'd yelled at me to commentate, it would been a massive sense of deja vu. Her face betrays a mask of indifference, random nods failing to disguise uncomplicated thoughts about how hungry she is or that she needs to remember to get some milk on the way home. I'm too far into the story to just stop, but I wrap it up nice and quickly, bypassing several of the lesser twists. When she realises I've stopped, she stops thinking about milk and taps a pen on her desk. She smiles, although a little nervously since her mind has wandered out of the room and been chatting to a local shopkeeper for several minutes, and says something like what about Jerry Seinfeld, he's very good. She has linked me with a what is the deal style comedian, although I suspect even the thought to make a connection between me and celebrity X has been too much effort for her. So I smile, nod, and say he's very good when I'm plainly lying, and we escape unscathed as the bell for lunch rings. I wonder why I felt the need to unburden my tracksuit story to this stranger right now, maybe it was the hangover, but it felt weird to have even remembered it. Maybe it only comes up in times of deep alienation, although I don't think that day I was feeling especially fragile. What was even stranger was when I left the office, the first thing I did was go to the store and buy myself a carton of plain milk to drink...it was a strange mind meld, one that has yet to be replicated...

I'm quite lucky that through a process of open dialogue, age, wisdom, and several acts of forgiveness on both sides, those child like feelings of alienation and envy have largely faded as I have accquired a solid and unremarkable group of like minded friends, and thus a place to belong. If I told the story about the tracksuit man to them, they'd shrug it off, and then bring up some obscure 1980s cricketer like Tom Hogan to make us all feel more comfortable. Time has continued to disappoint me with heroes, or supposed role models - too many Australian cricket captains have tried to pick fights with my friends Dads to make me feel anything but cynicism towards those I should replicate in action. When I walk through Hobart late at night after drinking, I no longer feel the need to avoid the gaze of those in a relationship and feel envious of them, and all is good. Last night, there was a table of young early into their university classes girls near us, all blonde hair and bad study habits, mobile phones and overuse of ribald language. I sipped quietly on my Victoria Bitter, now old enough to be the kind of person who doesn't chat these girls up but offers them fatherly advice. They don't even know what Airwolf was. When I look, I see a girl at the back of the group, in a clingingly tight orange top, regulation blonde hair, but patently unsure of herself. When they trotted off, she was the one who was at the back that no one seemed to notice or tell what generic Hobart nightclub they would be visiting next. She seemed to leave a full 5ive seconds after everyone else, while my friend pointed out that quite obviously she was their designated driver. I thought she looked depressed and underfed, with elbows that in the throes of passion would give you paper cuts, and eventually she caught our gaze and smiled, then frowned again when she had to catch up to the extras from Gossip Girl that made up her friendship group. There is a slim possibility that our comfortable conversation, easy jokes and relative self assured friendships are a point of envy to those at the back of a group feeling nervous and awkward - we envy their youth, they envy our lack of care, and the world continues to move around in ways that aren't as different as the demise of the shell suit would have you believe. It is the Telegraph after all, the worlds strangest pub, and as the latest dance pop sensations flicker idly across the television screen shaking their hips, someone at one of the pool tables up the back misses, in a drunken stupor, an easy red, and a circular pattern is completed that makes me ponder the continuing nature of existence and...

Well it did, but someone mentioned Tom Hogan, and I lost my train of thought...

The intermittent nightmares and fears of the totally safe

For the first time in my life, I'm having a recurring nightmare. It's probably because I'm not drinking, or it's a lime spider hallucination. Not really sure. However the colours and notions in this dream are really terrifying. To support my lime spider hallucination notion however, I also had a dream where everyone was gathered around a Game Gear style console oohing at something amazing and I couldn't see it, which is not only weird but impractical since a Game Gear is of course so huge you can see it from space. The nightmare goes like this. I'm in a car, a pretty basic car, four door, gear stick prominent, I'm the passenger in the car, and the radio is playing some generic rock tunes, tinkly little things with guitars that outstrip their talent, and everything feels perfectly normal. It's then that I look out the window, as we pass some generic middle of Tasmania town like Oatlands where the sheep are looking disgusted with their station in life as if annoyed that their agent didn't cast them in an amusing Wallace and Gromit short. It's then that I look out the window and see that, roughly, there's 164 miles to go until I reach my destination, and my driver, who luckily is fictional and certainly not based on a real person no sirree bob, has begun a long and painful monologue on their problems. The doors on the car shut with an emphatic clang, the radio dims in sound, and all that is left is empty conversation, whistling through my ears. This can go up to 10en minutes, and there's nowhere to go. I try and think of my default happy positions - Jennifer Adams, Father Ted jokes, the singing of Megan Korkery - but all I can hear is problem speak, until the car gets smaller and smaller, and a four door car feels like a tiny cramped office cubicle. The air conditioning begins blasting a furnace like heat as I have to nod and smile and can't do anything but listen. By the time the conversation is onto relationship woes it can feel like an entire decade has gone by, sitting in this seat, stuck fast to the vinyl melting against my skin, unable to escape, change the radio station, do anything but listen to the endless problems of another, and just before I wake up, with all the complaining going on in my head, I'll see the car pull up to another sign, past some more confused and un equity registered sheep, and inevitably, the sign will still say 164 miles, the sky will bleed on the horizon into a nightmarish grey and sienna sky, the sheep will begin chuckling, and the problems will get more and more elaborate, until I wake up and have to try and find my water bottle (that's a proper Mount Franklin one, not a hot rubbery one) in the dark, due to dry mouth and what Lily Allen would call The Fear. I had a dream about Lily Allen once - she offered me a lollipop in Hyde Park and when I turned it down she called me a facist and said I worked for The Sun. Then she ran off and got her Dad, but it wasn't Keith, it was someone else. This was fine, I didn't mind being called a facist, but if she'd sat me down and wanted to talk about her problems, of which there are many, I'd have been running through that park like a bat out of Hyde...

It is funny though to think that this is my recurring, and quite vivid, nightmare that springs into my vision every day like a bouncer you didn't see in your blind spot rejecting you for your shoes when you thought you had charmed your way in, is the apex of my potential woes, the absolute depths of my inner torture, a car trip to Launceston listening to someone elses problems. It's not exactly the threat of starvation is it? When you are as I am, middle class, safely in a home, the only mental stimulation provided most nights a flickering television in the corner showing comedy that may or may not be entirely inspired by David Brent, all that seems to bug you is things like theres no juice in the fridge. My Mum though will often reference that I have a, I'm not sure if this is the right spelling, a sodie scone face, which is some sort of Scottish insult against someone who pulls a huffy face and rolls their eyes, but any attempts I have to have the origins of this insult explained to me, since I can't see the connection between a small delicious baked good and a child who didn't get a lolly. Anyway, they often say that I get upset over ridiculous nonsense - luckily my Mum doesn't reference as she could her abjectly poverty stricken childhood in some sort of you don't know you are living kind of way. She had to cover her books with wallpaper which I just thought was the depths of despair when I was younger. One of their favourite memories of me involved the first time I had to do the dishes when I was 9ine. My Mum and Dad brought me in from a particularly intense game of Wimbledon in the street (I was popular Czech sensation Milosav Mecir) just to make me do a domestic chore. In truth, contributing to the household good wasn't such a bad thing, but to me it was like a kitchen based death penalty handed down by two grinning Scottish jurors who broke into an enjoyable song and dance routine about me, the subject, getting stuck into those pots and pans. I completely lost all of my Mecir cool, and absolutely spat it, storming to my room and staring at my Texas poster in the most undignified huff. At that moment I had absolutely no perspective, no concept of over-reaction, no idea concerns for that world outside my window that was a world of bitter tears - no one was suffering like I was, faced with five mildly dirty china (in your hand) mugs and one slightly scoured and greasy frying pan. No sir, someone call the great emancipator, the dishes are the final straw. Unfortunately my parents, having laid the trap with their show tune, were smart enough not to indulge and pamper this mood - in fact my Dad now believes entirely that all my anger is spurious and will fade like the career of Steven Seagal if you leave me alone - and eventually, I had to break out of my Texas cell to get a Penguin (biscuit). When I did, my Mum was standing in the hallway, looking at her watch, tapping her foot, and she just said you twat, with extra emphasis on the last T. And of course, I had to do the dishes anyway. She was right of course - although you can throw any kind of problem of this nature under the bus by saying in a Scottish accent bloody weans starving in the world and ye are worried about...however, that pile stood between me and freedom, it was a trap, and worst of all, our kitchen faced out onto the street, so not only did I have to scrub a suspiciously large amount of extra pots and pans (as the song predicted) I had to watch my friends playing tennis and waving to me. It might not have been the most in perspective moment, you know, bloody weans are starving in the world, but at that moment, my soapy fingers and my tired brain genuinely thought life really, really couldn't get any worse...

The reason I've been thinking about this today - the abject concerns of those with nothing to be concerned about - came from a short two act play that took place today at the ABC shop, which of course is the perfect place to start your Allo Allo collection. I had briefly, before being caught in an e-mail triangle on the fading nature of Australian cricket, been considering sending Blue Eye Shadow Girl some sort of anonymous Valentines card, although that just sounds too much like my mate in Scotland who sent this girl at a travel agents a card and a copy of James Blunts You're Beautiful - I don't think anyone has written a song called You're Dilligent, which would be a great summation for Blue Eye Shadow Girl. I was in something of a mood - the blonde woman in the newsagents in the retro tracksuit served everyone in the whole shop before she got to me, including an old woman who got a 5ive minute set of directions to the Post Office, which left me standing there like a spare part as I held out my wrestling magazine for purchase. I eventually left in impotent fury, as if me depriving her of 8.95 would somehow teach her a solid lesson about customer service. That magazine got firmly placed back on the rack let me tell you. I don't know why I thought the ABC shop would be a good place to visit in my fog of mild disappointment. I think the good thing about Rosny is it's a great place to clear debt. There's not really any shops that scream go in and buy stuff. The ABC shop seemed like a pleasant place to wile away three minutes, and there didn't seem to be any staff there, so I could browse at my leisure. In fact the only staff member was off trying to flirt his way into a free Boost Juice. Good luck mate. The last time I was in even in the ABC shop was to get the autograph of Michael Palin - the old bloke who used to be on Monty Python who now climbs mountains and goes into deserts for a crust. A woman at the front of the queue was animatedly telling him about her grandson in expressive detail while the poor old bloke reached deeply into his bag of English reserve and charm and tried to fend her off and attend to the needs of his autograph seeking parishioners. By the time the woman had wrapped up what she wanted to say about how little Jeff, who's 1, wants to climb a mountain just like Michael - did he really say all that, or was is just Ga Goo sounded like K2 to you - all I could do to try and make the guys life a little more bearable was to see autograph, get autograph and fuck off quite quickly. That's exactly what I did, making no conversation and simply saying hello, then getting the autograph for Dad with the minimum of fuss. He then looked up from his signing and said thanks in such a...thankful way, it was quite surprising. It was a moment of mutual connection, a moment when I realised that for all his mildly humorous patter and nice guy chats, Michael Palin has the same fear of talking to strangers banging on that I do. I know this because three seconds after he spoke with a gratitudinal inflection to me as I moved on quickly, another old woman had brought him a Nepalese flag and was beginning a long winded tale about her own trek through the wilds. I would have looked back, not at the agitated growing queue of people, but at my new pal Michael, but I figured another mutual glance would have spoiled the game - he had to be professional, he had to stay focused...and he had to learn to spell Dads name, I think he spelled it wrong...is that a P? I have no idea...

So, act one of this play - this woman, in a black Millers top with a nose you could ski down, she's throwing her hands in the air (and she did care) because she cant find, like, a Top Gear DVD. No one had the heart to point out to her Top Gear was on SBS, and thus wouldn't be stocked in this shop. Least of all me, who didn't want to get involved. Her mate, a frail woman with a buzz cut and an orange hand knitted top on was picking up every DVD in sight in a vain attempt to placate her, and saying no a lot. I don't think the frail orange womans heart was entirely in the hunt, but she was trying to keep up. This was act one of the theatre, an overdramatic and frankly over the top attempt to try and find a DVD that wasn't there, to draw nothing but attention to themselves and maybe try and drag the staff member back from his juicy quest. I thought nothing more of this until later, having talked myself out of buying some sort of book about the rise of Airheads, I saw the pair of them sitting on a little bench, and although I only caught a small snippet of their conversation, the lady in the black Millers top said without a trace element of irony that their failure to find this DVD was, quote, the absolute worst nightmare she could imagine. She said this and left it hanging, and I looked and she was a reasonably well fed woman, fully clothed, safely ensconsed in middle class safety, and this, THIS, was her ultimate nightmare, all she had to trouble her. It put my day in perspective, although it did set off some alarmist thoughts in my head of abusive hulking teenagers waiting to bully her for her failure to provide Clarkson on a platter. There was so much wrong with her statement, that I had to just let it go, although her face looked like mine when I was confronted with an angry pot all those years ago. An entire world, hers, had crumbled in the face of such a minor product related setback, there was nothing anyone could do - and when I looked back one final time, orange friend had a bewildered look on her face, like she too had a comment to make or a lesson on perspective to impart, but she had a store bought Wendys hot dog to get through, and she simply didn't have the time, inclination or energy in the face of such bunly goodness...

My ultimate nightmare incidentally is still getting burned - actually, being burned, being in hospital, with a Patch Adams style clown trying to cheer me up...at that point, sign me up for the car ride, even Lily Allen can drive...